When Ron came in to see me, he was obviously distraught. His face looked haggard and he lacked the joy I was accustomed to seeing in him.
We had been addressing his marital issues. Even admitting that his marriage had issues was a personal struggle for him.
After talking about his struggles, he paused for a moment, turned to me, and asked “What is this mental sickness for women to have to cheat on their spouse?”
At that moment Ron was hurting and looking for answers. It pained him that this could happen to him. It was easier to believe that there was some mental sickness behind what his wife did.
At this point, he was also painting with a broad brush. He lashed out at all women. It wasn’t that he hated women, he was just hurting so badly that it was easier to blame all women than to face the hard reality that his wife cheated on him.
I took a deep breath before responding. I needed to choose my words carefully so that he could begin to heal and move on from the situation.
He didn’t want to believe that could happen to his marriage. In his struggle of dealing with this, he went through the stage of blaming all women was easier to see things as big flaws in their gender rather than admit his own wife did what she did.
It was too painful to consider that she cheated on him, that what she did was reject him. There are times when the pain is so bad all you can do is deal in generalities. That’s a natural part of recovering from the affair.
I explained that his wife’s actions were her own, and cannot be generalized to all women. She made a choice in the past which led to the present situation, and she alone was responsible for it.
He needed to understand that what happened wasn’t because of some mental sickness or flaw with all women but rather because of choices made by his wife.
Ron has since moved on and is now happily married. He managed working through the pain of his wife’s betrayal. Recovery often required him to consider facts that he’d rather not look at, though he knew it was necessary for his healing.
You may find yourself going through times of lashing out at all men or all women for what your spouse did. When you’ve been hurt, you want to hurt back. That’s part of the recovery process and your journey toward healing. These are things you have to work through.
If you’re needing help in moving forward in your recovery from the affair, I encourage you to order your copy of the Affair Recovery Workshop. It contains the material that helped Ronnie and many others recover from their spouse’s affair.
Rather than lashing out at the world and blaming all men and all women, you can instead move ahead in recovering from the setback that happened to you.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
